


Roll for Love

by Kika988



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Monsters & Mana (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-27 20:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20766473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kika988/pseuds/Kika988
Summary: "A curse?" Yorak repeats quietly. Jiro hisses in pain, one hand tangling in Yorak's cloak, and Yorak nods to himself, as if coming to a decision."I can try to cast a-"Block's offer trails off into silence. He and Meklavar watch on in shock as Yorak leans in, pressing his lips to Jiro's.Keith's special in-game ability has some out-of-game repercussions.





	Roll for Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zjofierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/gifts).

> I've wanted to write a Monsters and Mana fic for soooo long! I actually play D&D and even DM a game, so it's something I really enjoyed working a fic around. That said, I _did_ integrate some "real" D&D stuff in this fic, but it should be understandable even if you don't know anything about the game. 
> 
> This fic is based on a feat in the [Forest Kingdom Campaign Compendium](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/221544/Forest-Kingdom-Campaign-Compendium) called True Love's Kiss. It's basically exactly what it sounds like. Enjoy!
> 
> Yorak — Keith  
Jiro — Shiro  
Block — Hunk  
Meklavar — Pidge

_True Love's Kiss: Increase your Wisdom or Charisma by one, to a maximum of 20. Choose any one character, either PC or NPC, as your true love. The selected character does not necessarily have to choose you as his or her true love in return. A mother might have true love for her son, but the son might gain the benefits of this feat for another at a later time. As an action, you can kiss your true love, removing all curses and ending any one spell affecting them. Additionally, as long as you live, your true love automatically stabilizes from dying. You may replace this feat and its benefits when you gain a level, in the event that your true love dies, or if you become evil._

"Well, that was nice," Block sighs. 

"_Suspiciously_ nice, even," Meklavar agrees, peering into the forest around them.

"Oh, come on," Jiro says good-naturedly. "We made some friends, ate some good food, slept in real beds. There was nothing to be suspicious of!"

"Nobody else thought it was weird that they had silver all over the place?" Meklavar asks. "Like, real, actual silver, not polished tin or anything."

"I figured it was just a cultural thing," Jiro says, frowning. "Elves like silver, right?" He glances over at Yorak, eyes catching on his slightly pointed ears. 

Yorak shrugs. "No idea. I was raised by humans, remember?"

"Oh, right!" Jiro flushes, bringing a gauntleted hand up to scratch at the back of his neck. "Sorry."

"No problem," Yorak replies. "I thought the silver was a little weird, too," he admits. "It was pretty, though." He pulls one of the daggers he'd bought in town. "Even their weapons are plated in silver. Don't fully see how practical that is, but it looks nice," he says, holding it up so that the edge glints in the sunlight streaming through the treetops. 

It's in that moment of distraction that they strike. 

Within seconds, the peaceful path through the woods is swarming with snarling creatures — wolves and badgers and boars and even some rats. Meklavar's the first to take a swing, as she'd been jumpy and suspicious all morning anyway. 

Jiro and Yorak jump into the fray right after her, while Block hovers in the middle of the trio, occasionally leaning out to blast a spell around Meklavar. 

"Is it just me, or are these things oddly hardy?" Meklavar grunts a few minutes later, after watching a wolf shake off an axe wound in its side like it was nothing more than a scratch.

"They're definitely tough,"Jiro agrees, jerking back in surprise as Yorak comes from out of nowhere, slicing through a badger that was about to bite Jiro's leg.

"What are you guys talking about?" Yorak asks, frowning, before turning to finish off the boar Jiro had been struggling with. "I mean—" He pauses to dodge a charge from a rat, then skewers it with his dagger. "They're vicious, sure, and bigger than usual, but not too bad." 

"Oh no," Block says from behind him. 

Yorak turns, frowning. "What is it?" 

"Your daggers. They're silver."

"Yeah? And?" Yorak hamstrings a wolf with one dagger, then whirls and throws the other at a rat that had been running up behind Jiro. 

"Only the silver weapons are doing much damage," Block stresses. "These are-"

"Shit," Meklavar curses, heaving mightily to behead a snarling badger. "Werecreatures."

"Don't let them bite you!" Block warns. "I don't know if I can heal that!"

"I don't know," Yorak says, "I think I'd make an alright werewolf." 

"A were_rat_, though?" Meklavar says pointedly. 

Yorak's nose wrinkles in distaste.

"Yeah, good point." He punctuates his statement by taking out another rat.

It doesn't take too long before they've dispatched all of the weres, with the exception of a couple who dart away into the underbrush before the party can stop them. Yorak sighs, wiping his daggers clean in the long grass. Everyone had done what they could to help, but since he'd had the only silver weapons, much of the work had fallen to him.

"Nobody got bitten, right?" Block asks, giving them each a cursory once-over. He pauses at Jiro, eyes going wide. "Jiro, man, you look a little pale, are you okay?"

"I don't… feel so good," Jiro manages before he tilts to one side. 

"Jiro!" Yorak's there in an instant, catching him just before he hits the ground. "Shit, what happened? Did you get bitten?"

Jiro manages to raise his arm, displaying bloody teeth marks in his hand. 

"Burns," he gasps, twisting in Yorak's grip. 

"Block!" Yorak twists, somehow still holding Jiro's bulk to his chest. "Do you have a… some kind of spell to help?"

"I don't know," Block says, wringing his hands as he watches Jiro writhe in pain. "Shifters aren't like an illness, it's a _curse_, so I don't know if a basic Restore will actually do any good."

"A curse?" Yorak repeats quietly. Jiro hisses in pain, one hand tangling in Yorak's cloak, and Yorak nods to himself, as if coming to a decision.

"I can try to cast a-"

Block's offer trails off into silence. He and Meklavar watch on in shock as Yorak leans in, pressing his lips to Jiro's.

* * *

"Wait, you do _what_?" Pidge demands, slapping her hands down on the table. 

"I kiss him," Keith repeats calmly. 

There's a long moment of shocked silence, during which Keith stubbornly keeps his eyes on the table. 

"I… don't think I can count that as a medicine check," Coran says slowly.

Keith sighs. 

"Check my character sheet," he tells Coran. "Back in the feats. I took True Love's Kiss." Coran's eyes go wide in realization. 

"Oh! And you made Jiro the target?" 

Keith nods. "I even wrote it in the notes, in case it came up." 

Coran flips through pages on his tablet for a moment, then grins when he finds it. 

"So you did! Well, in that case — Jiro, you feel the burning pain subside to a gentle warmth as Yorak kisses you. Within seconds, the pain is entirely gone, and you feel healthy once more."

Shiro continues gaping at Keith for a long moment.

"What just happened?" he finally asks. 

Keith flushes red, but he finally looks up to meet Shiro's gaze head-on. 

"There's a feat called True Love's Kiss. You just choose who your character's in love with, and you can remove curses or harmful spells with a kiss."

"What does it mean for _your_ character, though?" Shiro asks, frowning. Keith shrugs. 

"Just that he's in love with you— uh, Jiro, I mean. That's it." Shiro's face is doing something complicated, and Pidge and Hunk are sharing a _look_. "You all told me how Jiro kept getting into trouble, so it made sense." 

"I think it makes perfect sense," Coran says into the following silence. "And I think this is a good place to call this week's game. Next game, maybe you'll be able to figure out where all those weres came from!" he adds dramatically.

Keith's the first one up and away from the table. 

"Keith!" 

Keith comes to a halt in the hallway, staring longingly at the door to his quarters. He'd been _so close_. He can't ignore Shiro, though, so he turns with what he hopes is a casual smile on his face. 

"Hey, Shiro. What's up?"

"Hey," Shiro replies, smiling back at Keith for a moment before he seems to remember he had something to say. "Oh, um, I just wanted to say thanks for that, what you did in the game. You didn't have to." 

Keith shrugs, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "It's really not a big deal, and it helps you out, so I don't mind." 

"Still," Shiro says, "you gave up other helpful feats to take that one, and you changed an aspect of your character's story to help me. I appreciate it." He pauses, and winces. "Though, now that Coran's aware of it, he may make your character being in love with mine more of a focus, so I understand if you decide you want to drop it."

Keith doesn't know how to tell him that pretending to be in love with Shiro, in any form, has been almost alarmingly easy for him, so instead he merely smiles and claps Shiro on the arm. 

"Seriously, it's fine. Don't worry about it." He takes a couple steps back toward his quarters. "We're still on for sparring in the morning, right?" 

"Of course," Shiro agrees easily. "See you then," he adds as Keith escapes into his room.

* * *

"Does Jiro _know_ Yorak's in love with him?" 

The question comes out of the blue a few days later, and takes Keith so by surprise that his hands jerk on the controls of the new ship he's taking for a test run. He manages to cover for himself by taking the ship into a loop. Shiro grins from the co-pilot seat as Keith leans into the controls, the loop sharp but controlled until he pulls them out of it.

"Um. I'd assume not? It's not like they've talked about it, and Jiro's kind of oblivious most of the time. No offense."

Keith can see Shiro's frown out of the corner of his eye. 

"Yeah, I guess you're right. But why hasn't Yorak said anything?"

"Maybe he's afraid Jiro will turn him down and it'll ruin their friendship." Keith swallows hard, keeping his gaze firmly on the stars. "I mean, not that I've thought about it too much," he adds. "Just took the feat 'cause it would help you. But that makes sense, right?"

Shiro's quiet for so long that Keith really begins to worry that he doesn't believe him. 

"Shiro?"

"Sorry," he says instantly, looking over at Keith suddenly as if snapping out of a reverie. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess that makes sense."

They fly in silence for a few minutes, Shiro taking notes on the ship's responsiveness while Keith puts it through its paces. 

"Does it bother you?" Keith finally asks. Shiro looks over, eyebrows raised in question. "The Yorak thing, I mean. That he's in love with Jiro. Because of the feat," he adds, a bit lamely. "Does that bother you? I didn't think about it at the time, but I probably should have asked first." 

"What? No, of course not," Shiro replies. "If anyone was gonna do that for for Jiro, I'm glad it was y- um, Yorak."

Keith gives Shiro a long look, but his face is as open and honest as ever, so he just smiles and nods before gunning it into the asteroid belt they're approaching.

* * *

"Hey, Yorak." Yorak looks up to find Jiro dropping back from the group a bit to fall in step beside him. "Um. I thought I'd imagined it after the were fight last week, but after the hags stabbed me earlier, did you… kiss me?"

Yorak flushes red and looks away. 

"Uh… yeah. Guess I did. It doesn't mean anything, though!" he adds quickly. Jiro's brow creases in confusion. "It's just an ability I have. That requires, um. A kiss. Sorry," he adds. "I know it's weird."

"Wait. That's me, not Jiro," Shiro clarifies, holding a hand out over the board. "Can't Jiro tell Yorak's lying?"

Coran grins. "Perhaps! Keith, roll a deception check, and Shiro, roll for insight."

"Why wouldn't Jiro believe him?" Keith asks, looking almost offended. "Yorak hasn't been acting different at all, isn't this like… cheating or something?"

"Metagaming," Pidge interjects.

"You ran over and kissed Jiro as soon as you realized the knife was poisoned!" Shiro protests. "_Ran!_" 

"How is that weird?" Keith asks, scowling. "Jiro was dying!"

"He has a point," Lance points out, his form slightly transparent from where he and Allura were calling in to play from New Altea. "Hell, that sounds like normal Ke-" He's cut off with a wheeze when Allura elbows him. 

"Rolls, boys?" Coran prompts. 

"Sixteen," Keith replies. 

"Seventeen," Shiro says smugly.

Coran nods, looking at Shiro. "You suspect he's not telling the whole truth, but that's all you can discern for the moment." 

Shiro sighs, frowning. "Fine. Let's try to get to that safehouse the gnomes told us about."

The safehouse, predictably, isn't safe. Yorak kisses Shiro three times throughout the battle to break charm spells that keep getting placed on him. 

Keith books it as soon as the game is over, but there's a knock at his door just a few minutes later. He scowls, but stands to answer it. 

"Hey, sorry Shiro, I'm just tired, and-"

"I'm not Shiro," Pidge interrupts him, and Keith looks up in surprise to see her lips quirked up in a wry smile. "And you're not tired — you're hiding."

Keith rolls his eyes, but steps aside to let her in. 

"Are you here to tell me how dumb I'm being? Because I'm fully aware."

"And yet," Pidge says, raising her eyebrows as she settles, cross-legged, on the couch. 

"And yet," Keith agrees. 

Pidge huffs, picking at the edge of the couch cushion. "Okay, it's not _dumb_. But it's also not _subtle_. Which is fine, if that's what you want, but the way you keep running away after each game makes me wonder." She looks up, her gaze shrewd. "Have you two talked about it at all?"

"A little," Keith admits. "Nothing too.... In-depth," he settles on. 

"He still doesn't know," Pidge says flatly. 

"There's nothing to know," Keith insists, ignoring Pidge's incredulous look. "We're friends. That's all." 

"Sure, that's all you _are_," Pidge says. "But is it all you _want_?" Keith looks away, and Pidge sighs. "Look, you know I suck at this emotional shit. But it's worth noting that even _Lance_ has noticed. I got nominated to talk to you because Hunk said he'd cry and probably just make you uncomfortable."

"He's not wrong," Keith grudgingly admits. They sit in silence for a minute before Pidge speaks again. 

"I know we joked about it at the table a little, but the way Yorak's always running after Jiro when he's in danger… doesn't that feel a little familiar to you?" She shrugs. "Just maybe something worth thinking about, that the character who's in love with Jiro acts an awful lot like _you_ do when Shiro's in danger."

* * *

Even as wary as they've become of late, the ambush takes them utterly by surprise. They're not equipped to take on a kraken at their level, but they have no choice but to fight it, as it has them trapped in an underwater cavern.

Block is casting heals left and right, and they fight tooth and nail, but it's not enough. The kraken eventually goes down, but so does Jiro. 

Yorak manages to drag him out of the water, then falls to his knees in the sand beside his friend's body. He leans down, pressing a kiss to Jiro's lips in what has almost become habit at this point. 

...and nothing happens. 

"What the hell, Coran?" Keith demands. "The feat says—"

"I know what it says," Coran replies, smiling sympathetically. "But Jiro isn't just unconscious, he's one failed saving throw away from actual death, because he couldn't stabilize underwater. I'm going to need something a little _more_."

"Like what?" Keith asks suspiciously. 

"A skill check, of sorts," Coran explains. "He's at death's door, so you have to convince him to come back. What do you say?"

Keith's jaw works silently for a moment before he tilts his chin up stubbornly. Shiro shifts next to him, leaning in a bit closer. 

"Keith, you don't—" 

"It's fine, Shiro," Keith assures him. He looks over at Coran. "Yorak's gonna… gonna pull him up into his lap, sort of? And, um." 

Yorak bows his head close to Jiro's, saltwater dripping out of his hair and onto Jiro's too-still face. 

"Please, Jiro. Don't leave us here, not like this. The team still needs you." He pauses, leans in a bit closer, pressing their foreheads together. "_I_ still need you. Please… you can't do this to me." 

Keith feels Shiro stiffen beside him, and the movement drags him back to reality. He looks up to meet Shiro's eyes, and suddenly remembers— 

_Shiro, please, fight! You can't do this to me again._

He hasn't thought about it much since then, hasn't allowed himself to, but suddenly he's thrust back into that moment, probably the scariest of his life. His fists clench in his lap as his heart thunders in his chest, and he knows Shiro's fine now, he _knows_ that, he's right here beside him, but it's suddenly still all too much, and he finds himself fleeing the room, his name echoing down the hall after him.

He doesn't actually remember running to his room, but he finds himself there, hunched over on his bed, head in his hands. He's vaguely aware of the knock on the door, but he doesn't remember calling out to answer before the mattress dips beside him. 

"Coran rolled Yorak's charisma check for you. Jiro's fine," Shiro says after a brief silence. Well, that explains why the door opened for him. "But are you?"

"Yeah," Keith answers instinctively. He knows even as he says it that it's an obvious lie. To Shiro's credit, he doesn't immediately call Keith on it. 

"That feat's come in handy, huh?" Shiro says, smiling a little. He leans over, bumping their shoulders together. "Guess you're just as good at saving me in game as in real life."

Keith huffs out a humorless laugh at that, but it's enough to get him to relax a little. 

"Coran gave you advantage on your charisma roll, by the way," Shiro says casually. Keith looks up, eyebrows raised. 

"Yeah?"

Shiro nods. "He asked if I thought Jiro would hear him and respond, and when I said yes, without a doubt, he gave you advantage." 

"Oh." Keith looks down at his hands, clasped tightly together in his lap. "That's good, I guess." 

"I don't think I ever told you, but I heard you, before." Keith doesn't quite follow Shiro's meaning until he adds, "Not today, I mean. In Black, after Allura put me in this body. I heard you speaking back then." He pauses, smiling. "That's why I could answer Coran so easily today. I know Jiro would respond because _I_ did."

"I never realized," Keith says slowly. "You said you'd been dreaming."

"I had been," Shiro agrees. "But you pulled me out of it. Pulled me back to myself. Back to you," he adds, glancing up to meet Keith's eyes.

Keith feels his breath catch in his throat; Shiro's so close, so earnest. He can feel the warmth of him against his side, and barely resists the urge to lean into it. Shiro would let him, of course, but Keith would always want more. If he crosses the imaginary lines he's drawn for himself in the sand, he's not sure how he'll be able to step back behind them.

"This feat you took is a little funny, though," Shiro says after a moment. "Because before, when I heard you and woke up and you were right there over me…" He pauses, laughing to himself. "You leaned in, and for a second I thought you were going to kiss me."

Keith looks over, and Shiro's looking down, his lips twisted up into a half-smile, his cheeks flushed. Even the tips of his ears are red, a detail Keith finds oddly endearing.

"Sorry, that was probably a weird thing to wake up to," Keith says, a weak effort to turn the moment into a joke, anything to calm his roiling stomach and the circling beat of _I almost did, I wanted to, I always want to_ in his mind.

"No," Shiro says, so quietly Keith almost misses it. He clears his throat, then adds, "I mean, it would have been kind of fairy-tale, right? Woken from a deep sleep with a kiss." 

"You wouldn't have wanted that from _me_, though," Keith says, heart in his throat, because he _needs_ that now, needs to hear Shiro laugh it off and agree that no, he'd never want Keith to kiss him, that would be _ridiculous_, right? They're best friends, _brothers_, everything to each other except what Keith wants most. But if Shiro says it, Keith will try to be that.

Instead, Shiro looks up, his eyes searching Keith's. Keith is caught there, vaguely aware of Shiro's Adam's apple bobbing sharply out of the corner of his eye as he's trapped in Shiro's gaze, as if he's looking for something in Keith's eyes. Whatever he finds there, he seems to come to some decision. 

"Actually," Shiro finally says, "you're the only one I _would_ want it from."

It takes a moment for Shiro's words to register, for the sounds to press an actual meaning into his mind. 

"Shiro," Keith breathes. "You-"

"It's fine if you don't," Shiro says quickly. "Want that, I mean. I just… I thought you should know, before the thing with Yorak and Jiro goes any further. I don't want to make you uncomfortable, so I can… Jiro can stop asking questions and we can just ignore it, or you could drop the feat, or-"

Yorak's been kissing Jiro in game so often that Keith's spent a lot of time recently thinking about what it would be like to kiss Shiro. He'd never imagined that he'd kiss Shiro to cut him off, never imagined Shiro's lips working against his own as his words fumble to a stop. He hadn't imagined their noses bumping, or how he isn't sure what to do with his hands, or the way their breath mingles for a moment when he starts to pull back and Shiro sways after him, as if unwilling to break that connection.

"I don't want to ignore it," Keith says. "I've been doing that for too long."

"Thank god," Shiro says with a relieved smile as he reaches up, cupping Keith's face gently to pull him into another kiss, more sure and more heated than the last. This time, Keith stops worrying and just falls into it, trusting Shiro to catch him.

* * *

"Everyone okay?" 

The party quickly takes stock, checking for injuries or any lingering spell effects from the goblin party that had accosted them. 

"Just a scratch," Jiro announces with a smile; he was the only one injured, but being that it's such a minor injury, he's pretty proud of it. 

Yorak makes his way to Jiro's side and drags him down into a kiss, searing and thorough, careful of the slash on his arm. 

Block sighs. "Yorak, you know you can't actually _heal_ him with a kiss, right? That's not how that works."

"I know," Yorak says as he pulls away, flushed red. "I just, um. Wanted to be sure."

"Hey, Yorak," Jiro says, grinning. "Maybe you should try again? I'm feeling a little woozy. Might be poisoned or something."

"Happy to," Yorak agrees easily, leaning in for another kiss. Jiro meets him halfway as Meklavar sighs and starts checking the goblins for loot.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! All kudos and comments are greatly appreciated. 
> 
> Come say hi on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/B1ackPa1adins)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Roll for Love by Kika988](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22783099) by [taikodragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taikodragon/pseuds/taikodragon)


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